Once upon a time, Haiti was called the Jewel of the Antilles because it was the richest colony in the world. However, much of this wealth was built through slave labor, and the roots of Haiti’s French colonial past put in place a caste system of the “elites and noirs,” which grew into the socioeconomic disparity that Haiti struggles with today. The richest Haitian families hold most of the wealth, while a much larger portion of the population struggles with poverty, resulting in food insecurity, health problems, and educational deficiency.
Archiv: Gilbert Bigio / familiy
How US lawyers and bankers aided powerful Haitian tycoons now sanctioned over corruption by Canada
(07.02.2023)
In the early 1990s, the U.S. government sanctioned Bigio, his wife, son and others for their support of a military coup that ousted Haiti’s first democratically elected president. Years later, a member of a Haitian militia ‒ or private army ‒ accused Bigio and another businessman of paying for the 1993 assassination of a prominent democracy activist, according to Jeb Sprauge, author and University of California Riverside research associate. Authorities in Haiti did not charge Bigio with or accuse him of wrongdoing.
The Billionaire Oligarch Who’s Enabling Haiti’s Murderous Gangs
(16.12.2022)
For years, Haitians have said Bigio and other oligarchs are complicit in the violence strangling the nation: This year 1,448 people have been killed, with another 1,005 kidnapped for ransom. Until now, however, the international community has stayed mostly silent about Haiti’s corrupt elite. (…)
Daniel Foote, the former U.S envoy to Haiti who resigned in September 2021 to protest against the disastrous American policy, told me that he thinks Canada and the U.S. State Department are working together to economically punish Bigio and the others. But he suspects that the United States cannot follow Canada’s example by imposing stiff sanctions, possibly because Bigio may be a U.S. citizen and thus entitled to due process. In theory, however, U.S. prosecutors could bring cases against Bigio and other oligarchs for funding the vicious gangs whether these defendants have U.S. citizenship or not. As things stand, inaction is much more likely.